I
At last George Farr gave up trying to see her. He had phoned vainly and time after time, at last the telephone became the end in place of the means: he had forgotten why he wanted to reach her. Finally he told himself that he hated her, that he would go away; finally he was going to as much pains to avoid her as he had been to see her. So he slunk about the streets like a criminal, avoiding her, feeling his very heart stop when he did occasionally see her unmistakable body from a distance. And at night he lay sleepless and writhing to think of her, then to rise and don a few garments and walk past her darkened house, gazing in slow misery at the room in which he knew she lay, soft and warm, in intimate slumber, then to return to home and bed, to dream of her brokenly.
When her note came at last, he knew relief, sharp and bitter as the pain had been. When he took the square white paper from the post office, when he saw her nervous spidery script sprawled thinly across it, he felt something like a shocking silent concussion at the base of his brain. I won’t go, he told himself, knowing that he would, and he reread it, wondering if he could bear to see her, if he could speak to her, touch her again.
He was ahead of the appointed time, sitting hidden from view at a turn of the stairs ascending to the balcony. The stairs were enclosed by a solid wood balustrade and from the foot of the steps the long tunnel of the drugstore swept toward light and the entrance, a tunnel filled with the mingled scents of carbolic and sweet syrups: a medicated, a synthetic purity.
He saw her as she entered the door and, rising, he saw her pause on seeing him, then, as in a dream, silhouetted against the door, with light toying with her white dress, giving it a shallow nimbus, she came tap-tapping on her high heels toward him. He sat back trembling and heard her mount the steps. He saw her dress, and feeling his breath catch, he raised his eyes to her face as without pausing she sank into his arms like a settling bird.
“Cecily, oh, Cecily,” he said brokenly, taking her kiss. He withdrew his mouth. “You damn near killed me.”
She drew his face quickly back to hers, murmuring against his cheek. He held her close and they sat so for a long time. At last he whispered: “You’ll ruin your dress sitting here.” But she only shook her head, clinging to him. Finally she sat up.
“Is this my drink?” she asked, picking up one of the glassed, sweetish liquids beside him. She put the other glass in his hand, and he closed his fingers about it, still looking at her.
“Now, we’ll have to get married,” he said, fatuously.
“Yes?” sipping her drink.
“Well, won’t we?” he asked, in surprise.
“You’ve got it backward. Now we don’t have to get married.” She gave him a quick glance, and seeing his face, she laughed. Her occasional coarseness so out of keeping with her innate and utter delicacy always shocked him. But then George Farr, like most men, was by nature a prude. He eyed her with disapproval, silent. She set her glass down and leaned her breast against him. “George?”
He thawed, putting his arm about her, but she refused her mouth. She thrust herself away from him and he, feeling that he had conquered, released her.
“But aren’t you going to marry me?”
“Darling, aren’t we already married, now? Do you doubt me, or is it only a marriage license will keep you true to me?”
“You know it isn’t.” He couldn’t tell her that it was jealousy, that he didn’t trust her. “It’s only that—”
“Only what?”
“Only that if you won’t marry me, you don’t love me.”
She moved from him. Her eyes became dark blue. “Can you say that?” She looked away, and her movement was half shiver, half shrug. “I might have known it, though. Well, I’ve been a fool, I guess. You were just—just passing the time with me, then?”
“Cecily—” trying to take her in his arms again. She evaded him and rose.
“I don’t blame you. I suppose that’s what any man would have done in your place. That’s all men ever want of me, anyway. So it might as well have been you, as anyone. … Only I’m sorry you didn’t tell me before—sooner, George. I thought you were different.” She gave him her narrow back. How little, how—how helpless she is! And I have hurt her, he thought, in sharp pain, rising and putting his arm about her, careless of who might see.
“Don’t, don’t!” she whispered quickly turning. Her eyes were quite green again. “Someone will see! Sit down!”
“Not till you take that back.”
“Sit down, sit down! Please, George! Please, please!”
“Take that back, then.”
Her eyes were dark again, and he read terror in her face, and he released her, sitting down again.
“Promise me not ever, ever, ever to do that again.”
He promised dully and she sat beside him. She slid her hand into his and he looked up.
“Why do you treat me like this?”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Saying I don’t love you. What other proof do you want? What other proof can I give? What do you consider proof? Tell me: I’ll try to do it.” She looked at him in delicate humility.
“I’m sorry: forgive me,” he said abjectly.
“I’ve already forgiven you. It’s forgetting it I can’t promise. I don’t doubt you, George. Or I couldn’t have. …” Her voice died away and she clutched his hand convulsively, releasing it. She rose. “I must go.”
He caught her hand. It was unresponsive. “May I see you this afternoon?”
“Oh, no. I can’t come back this afternoon. I have some sewing to do.”
“Oh, come on, put it off. Don’t treat me again like you did. I nearly went crazy. I swear I did.”
“Sweetheart, I can’t, I simply can’t. Don’t you know I want to see you as badly as you want to see me; that I would come if I could?”
“Let me come down there, then.”
“I believe you are crazy,” she told him, with contemplation. “Don’t you know I’m not supposed to see you at all?”
“Then I’m coming tonight.”
“Hush!” she whispered, quickly, descending the steps.
“But I am,” he repeated stubbornly. She looked hurriedly about the store, and her heart turned to water. Here, sitting at a table in the alcove made by the ascending stairs, was that fat man, with a half-empty glass before him.
She knew dreadful terror, and as she stared at his round, bent head, all her blood drained from her icy heart. She put her hand on the railing, lest she fall. Then this gave way to anger. The man was a nemesis: every time she had seen him since that first day at luncheon with Uncle Joe, he had flouted her, had injured her with diabolic ingenuity. And now, if he had heard—
George had risen, following her, but at her frantic gesture, her terror-stricken face, he retreated again. Then she changed her expression as readily as you would a hat. She descended the steps.
“Good morning, Mr. Jones.”
Jones looked up with his customary phlegmatic calm, then he rose, lazily courteous. She watched him narrowly with the terror-sharpened cunning of an animal, but his face and manner told nothing.
“Good morning, Miss Saunders.”
“You have the morning coca-cola habit, too, I see. Why didn’t you come up and join me?”
“I am still cursing myself for missing that pleasure. You see, I didn’t know you were alone.” His yellow bodyless stare was as impersonal as the jars of yellowish liquid in the windows and her heart sank.
“I didn’t see nor hear you come in, or I would have called to you.”
He was noncommittal. “Thank you. The misfortune is mine, however.”
She said suddenly: “I wonder if you will do me a favor? I have a thousand million things to do this morning. Will you go with me and help me remember them—do you mind?” Her eyes held a desperate coquetry.
Jones’ eyes were fathomless, slowly yellow. “I’ll be delighted.”
“Finish your drink, then.”
George Farr’s good-looking face, wrung and jealous, peered down at them. She made no sign, yet there was such pitiful terror in her whole attitude that even George’s dull and jealous intelligence took her meaning. His face sank again from view. Jones said:
“Let the drink go. I don’t know why I keep on trying the things. Make myself think I have a highball, perhaps.”
She laughed in three notes. “You can’t expect to satisfy tastes like that in this town. In Atlanta now—”
“Yes, you can do lots of things in Atlanta you can’t do here.”
She laughed again, flatteringly, and they moved up the antiseptic tunnel of the drug store, toward the entrance. She would laugh in such a way as to lend the most innocent remark a double entendre: you immediately accepted the fact that you had said something clever, without recalling what it was at all. Jones’ yellow idol’s stare remarked her body’s articulation, her pretty, nervous face, while George Farr, in a sick, dull rage, watched them in silhouette, flatly. Then they reassumed depth and she, fragile as a Tanagra, and he, slouching and shapeless and tweeded, disappeared.